The Remainder Will Explicate the Most

It could be alluring, a collection

Of exquisite writing about dying,

By the living, of course, who were trying

Either to capture what it would be like

To do the dying, or to illustrate

Death as one might illustrate anything,

But not those texts alone this time—nope, not

The poems and stories and dolly-zoomed scenes—

Both those and the actual, accurate

Depictions of that creative person

Who had carefully delineated

Death in advance, in anticipation,

Here for comparison—gift vs. death.

(Given that death ends in zero, subtract.)